In those two years behind bars, letters were all he was permitted to write. The privations broke Wilde - but they also inspired his last work, 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol,' which was written after his release.

When Wilde arrived, Reading Gaol was one great Victorian machine of Christian penance, forcing prisoners to meditate on their crimes in silence, while performing physical labor amid the reek of their own waste. The only sanitation was a bucket he had to empty - or 'slop out' - himself: 'You were unlocked, let down for breakfast, locked back up again to eat it, unlocked again to slop out, to empty the bucket, then locked up again,' Davis recalls.Ī miserable existence for sure, but Davis says Wilde had it worse - in Wilde's day, prisoners weren't even allowed to talk. The Ballad of Reading Gaol / Oscar Wilde illustrated by Frans Masereel Date: 1923 Identifier: 30804005681506 Genre: Wood engravings Culture: Prisoners. Like Wilde, Davis spent 23 hours a day in his cell. Oscar Wilde’s The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898) He did not wear his scarlet coat, For blood and wine are red, And blood and wine were on his hands When they found him with the dead, The poor dead woman whom he loved, 5 And murdered in her bed.

In 1895, Wilde was convicted of homosexual activity and sentenced to serve two years.

A painting of Wilde hangs inside a cell at the former Reading Prison.

Oscar wilde the ballad of